It is a problem in the field of InFlight Entertainment to provide passengers on all the aircraft of a particular carrier with the most current In-Flight Entertainment Content for delivery either to the passenger's wireless personal communication devices or aircraft-based displays. Air-To-Ground communications, such as between an aircraft in flight and Air-To-Ground terrestrial sites, fails to provide sufficient bandwidth to transmit all of the InFlight Entertainment Content from the Air-To-Ground terrestrial sites to the aircraft in flight. As a result, InFlight Entertainment Content is typically manually loaded onto the InFlight Entertainment server which is located in each aircraft via portable media (USB sticks) when the aircraft is parked at an airport gate. Thus, every InFlight Entertainment Content update requires a visit to an aircraft by maintenance personnel. The two weaknesses with this method are the cost to distribute and swap the USB sticks, and the time it takes to accomplish this: the effort to create a new USB stick, ship, and swap the USB stick in all of the aircraft of a carrier takes about 3 to 4 weeks. This is an expensive and inefficient process, which is lacking in timeliness of InFlight Entertainment Content delivery. In addition, the coordination of these InFlight Entertainment Content deliveries is complex and prone to human error, especially since the aircraft are transient and can be rerouted to meet the needs of the airline or for weather/maintenance events.
Another method in loading InFlight Entertainment Content on the aircraft is via wireless download (3G Cellular/4G Cellular/WiFi connectivity). The issues with wireless connectivity are the data file size of InFlight Entertainment Content (1 GB/movie), the extent of wireless coverage, and the cost of wireless service; it can be very costly to go down this path vs. manually swapping out USB sticks. In addition, at a busy airport, the ability to concurrently transmit InFlight Entertainment Content to multiple aircraft while they sit at the gate is inconsistent.
Therefore, there presently is no reliable, effective, cost-efficient way of delivering InFlight Entertainment Content to aircraft.